


A Catch of Breath

by Miss_Ash



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-13 21:02:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18038981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Ash/pseuds/Miss_Ash
Summary: “Are you sure that you're alright, miss?”For a split second, Phryne is standing at the edge of a field, back in Collingwood, a crumpled bicycle beneath her and a boy with similarly kind eyes asking the exact same question..Phryne seems to have a habit for running into people.





	A Catch of Breath

**Author's Note:**

> This is nothing more than a procrastination drabble, I'm afraid. It's written more as a sort of series of coincidences, however it could be taken as a Soulmate AU if that's your thing. I say take it whichever way you makes you happy.

It's the sight of the sun – just disappearing behind the tops of the trees, casting long, flickering shadows across the grass – that lets Phryne know she's in trouble.

“Be home by sundown,” her mother had said with the absent sternness she always did now, and Phryne had smiled and nodded and promised – with absolutely no intent behind it – that she would be. Much as she loves her mother, and she does, she has been distant and somewhat uncaring in recent months, and Phryne finds it easy enough to get around her commands.

It had been her father at the doorway as she scampered out that had ruined it, face screwed up in anger, bottle in hand.

“You best listen to your mother if you don't want an ear-boxing, Phryne girl,” he'd growled, and she had scowled and stepped around him, mumbling something about it making no difference whether or not she came back anyway, and ran off.

Phryne knows he had meant it though, and she almost feels it in her ears as the shadows chase her, lapping at her heels as she runs against a clock ticking down to punishment. She's so distracted, one foot under the other faster and faster until she's sweating with exertion, that she hasn't the time to see or hear the bicycle before it's far too late – and then everything is a mess of limbs and wheels.

It's the sound of tumbling words, rather than pain of impact, that bring her back to reality, a steady stream of apologies in a light tenor as a hand reaches out and helps her up.

“I really am so sorry, I just didn't see you!” The boy insists, brushing himself off and looking her over as if assessing for injury. It's an odd level of concern, Phryne thinks, when this was probably her fault. She looks down to see a ripped skirt and bloodied knees and curses softly to herself.

She’ll definitely be in trouble now.

“It's fine,” she replies, catching her breath as she looks back at him. “Was my fault anyway, wasn't looking.”

“Still.” He grimaces, picking up his bike and giving it a shake. Thankfully, Phryne thinks, it looks unharmed. “I'm sorry, miss.”

She scoffs at that. “I ain't miss to no one, mister.”

He smirks at her but doesn't comment, instead giving her another careful once over. “Are you sure that you're alright, miss?”

Phryne rolls her eyes, but shrugs. She's in trouble either way, she's hardly going to cry over a couple of scraped knees.

“Had worse. Is your bicycle okay?”

He glances to it and then back, smiling. “Had worse.”

She can't help but offer him a small smirk in response to that, but the cold chill of approaching night whips at her and she glances up at the sky.

She is in a _lot_ of trouble.

“I'm sorry,” she tells him, almost meaning it. The boy is polite and kind-eyed, and it's been a long time since she spoke to someone like that. She almost wouldn't mind the conversation. It's getting later by the minute though, and if she ever wants to be let out again, she really ought to run. “I really should be getting home.”

He nods. “Of course, of course. Me too. Can I see you anywhere? This isn't the best part of town.”

She can't help but grin at that. Of course, he's not a local - explains the manners.

“You don't need to tell me that, I've lived my whole life here.”

He raises an eyebrow, smirking again. “Collingwood girl, eh?”

“Through and through,” she grins, turning to leave. She hesitates a moment though, looking back at him over her shoulder. “Nice to meet you,” she adds, though she isn't sure why - it's highly unlikely she'll ever see the boy again.

He grins back though, inclining his head like a proper little gentleman. “Nice to meet you too – feel free to run into me again if you're ever in Richmond, miss.”

“Not a miss!” she calls back with a laugh as she runs off down the street, but as she goes she hears his amused shout back to her.

“Look like one to me!”

She can't help the small giggle, and she realises with a little jolt that this might be the first time she's laughed since everything happened. She stops dead for a moment, looking back towards the source – but boy and bicycle both have disappeared again – and she shakes her head, carrying on home.

She is, as expected, in _big_ trouble when she returns – the evidence of it stings for several days afterwards. Still, she thinks, as she cleans up her knees after the scolding is over – for kind eyes and the warmth of laughter, it was almost worth it.

 

…

 

If she keeps running, Phryne thinks, then she’ll make it to the hospital before he even knows she’s gone. All she has to do is keep going – one foot in front of the other like she'd had to do all those times as a child, racing home against the sunset for fear of a beating.

She's been hatching this plot for weeks – months even, slowly ironing out each and every detail so that when this moment came, it wouldn't go wrong. She's planned it all, from the timing (René is at the dog track and won't be home for hours yet) to the route (roundabout and secret, nowhere she might bump into a mutual acquaintance) to the destination (hospital, it really _needs_ to be a hospital but not the closest, or even second, nowhere he might think to look until she's upped and gone again).

Yes, everything is perfect. So perfect, though, she forgot to count for imperfections, which is exactly why she's surprised when a moment’s loss of attention suddenly becomes a chest, slamming into her like a brick wall – and then she's on the floor, apologies ringing in her ears that aren't her own, and she looks up into kind, stunned eyes as the brick wall helps her off the ground, expression one of absolute mortification.

“Pardonnez-moi, mademoiselle!”

Phryne is speechless for a minute looking back at what she can now see is a soldier – an Australian one by his uniform and the accent that creeps around the edges of his French. The familiarity of the sound washes over her like a warm summer’s day, comforting in a way she just now realises she's missed – even from the battlefield. It's almost enough to ease her panic for a second.

“Mademoiselle, êtes-vous blessés?” he asks when she remains silent, brow creasing in apparent concern, but she still doesn't know what to say. She needs to keep going but she finds she is frozen, momentarily, by those kind eyes and a voice that sounds like home even as it speaks a language that doesn't.

“I'm fine,” she manages, and surprises herself a little at the Collingwood that comes out in the words. She hasn't spoken with an Australian accent for a long time (beaten out of her as it was at school in England) but it curls around her tongue now as if it never left.

The soldier seems understandably surprised.

“You're Australian,” he smiles as if she's an old friend – but then she recognises the signs, if she'd a penny for every digger she'd eased with the comfort of a fellow countryman she would be a rich, rich woman.

“Melbourne,” she responds, with a tight smile of her own. She needs to go, needs to complete her escape, but she can't quite make her feet move.

His eyes light up, smile broadening. “Richmond.”

But at that she can't help but smile wider in response, standing up a little straighter and brushing off her skirt. “Collingwood.”

The soldier looks her up and down, eyes assessing her with a little more scrutiny than she likes – there's something about the depth of them, the small line that appears between his brows – that says he sees too much.

“Are you hurt?” he inquires again, in English, and her smile wilts a little.

“No, thank you, I'm perfectly fine.” And it's the truth in so far as this incident. Admittedly neither the fall nor the impact has done much for what she's now certain is a broken rib or two, forget the rest of what her clothing’s hiding – but he's not the one who caused it, and she's not about to lament her troubles to a perfect stranger in the street, countryman or not. This unexpected interruption has given her the time to catch her breath, but she needs to be going now anyway, she can't afford to dawdle. “Anyway, I'm terribly sorry for running into you, sir, but I really should be going.”

With that Phryne nods her head in his direction, picks up her bag, and takes a step around him.

“Wait.” His voice stops her in her tracks, and she curses her own sudden sentimentality.

“Yes?” She does her best to remain nonchalant, not to give away her panic or her pain or the fear bubbling within her that these few lost minutes will be all it takes for her perfect plan to fail.

“Are you sure that you're alright, miss?”

For a split second, Phryne is standing at the edge of a field, back in Collingwood, a crumpled bicycle beneath her and a boy with similarly kind eyes asking the exact same question. She shakes it off, though, nodding her head at him.

“Yes, thank you – but I'm not a miss,” she adds – unsure as to quite why. Perhaps as a tribute to the child she was, or else to kind eyed strangers knocked to the ground in her never-ending haste.

A strange look passes across the soldier’s face, and his mouth pulls up at the corner. “Look like one to me,” he says, tipping his hat, and then he turns and she blinks after him for several seconds before she turns the other way, setting off again at a fast walk – though not without casting one last look over her shoulder to watch him walking off.

When she finds herself at the hospital, and later on a boat back to England, still battered and a little broken but patched up now and gloriously _free_ , she thinks back on the Australian soldier with the kind eyes, and wonders if he wasn't just the good luck charm she'd needed.

It's been a long time since she thought of Melbourne as home, but the echoing sound of a familiar accent is just enough to remind her that it was, once, and somewhere inside her – maybe it still is.

 

…

 

For once, Phryne almost wishes she'd called for backup. Her suspect is _fast_ , and fit as she is it really wouldn't hurt to have someone positioned ahead to cut them off. She's fit but she's still human, and the perp got an unfortunate head start on her.

It doesn't help, either, that it's dark as anything – and she doesn't know the roads here as well as she thinks the object of her chase seems to. If they know where they're going, she may be in serious trouble. Still, there's nothing she can do about the things that disadvantage her, all she can do is keep going. One foot in front of the other, just like always.

The thief rounds a corner sharply ahead of her and Phryne curses, skidding around it thirty paces back and continuing to sprint. She wonders that her perp still has any energy, honestly, because hers is failing fast, but she persists nevertheless. Corner, corner, corner, until the narrow side streets have opened into wider ones and she stares out into the darkness in spluttering, breathless rage.

She's lost him. Damn it all to actual hell.

Phryne gives herself a moment, letting her hands fall to her knees and taking several deep breaths, hard as they are to come, then she stands, gathering herself for the long trek home and turns – and abruptly bumps into someone. Her first instinct, of course, is that it's the perp so she throws out a punch only to find her arm captured by a hand quicker than she was.

Then the shadows part and the first thing she sees are kind eyes, ones in a face she knows, and relief washes through her. “Jack!”

“Miss Fisher!” he greets, surprised, as he makes the same realisation of familiar identity, quickly releasing her arm. “What on earth are you doing here?”

Jack looks her up and down with scrutiny in his gaze that quickly turns to concern. She can understand why, she supposes, after all she must look an absolute state.

“Are you alright?” he asks instead, changing tack.

Phryne paints on a smile. “I'm fine, Jack. I'm afraid my suspect got away though.”

“Suspec - you know what, I don't think I want to know, knowing would probably mean paperwork.”

She grins, it's such a joy these days, the way Jack just rolls with it.

“Are you sure that you're alright, Phryne?”

Phryne hesitates, looking up at him. The shadows of night cast half Jack’s face in darkness, his eyes standing out almost as a body of their own. Jack, Phryne has always thought – ever since their first meeting in a bathroom – has kind eyes. Right now they look at her with warmth and concern enough to drown in, and she can't help but muse on the ghosts of kind-eyed strangers past.

Strangers who seem at once distant and familiar to her.

Phryne's silence only seems to concern Jack more, and he takes a careful step forward, reaching a hand out and placing it on her shoulder. “Perhaps we should go inside?”

“Inside?” she asks, looking around herself in confusion, and then she notices the flower beds, the low gate, the police car sitting in the driveway. It dawns on her with all the subtlety of an electric shock.

She has run, however inadvertently and quite without noticing, to Jack's house.

Phryne stares at it for a long moment, eyes roaming across the features she has come to know so well in recent months as Jack wraps a concerned arm around her. She stops dead as her eyes hit the bicycle, sitting nonchalant against the front stoop.

“Miss Fisher?”

Phryne stares a moment longer, stirred memory stirring her tongue to foolish fancy. “Not a miss,” she whispers, and she feels Jack’s arm tense about her shoulders.

For a moment, he is silent, then his voice comes – rich baritone now, far grown from the light tenor of boyishness but oddly trembling nonetheless. “Look like one to me.”

Phryne looks up into his eyes, eyes that she's always thought of as kind, and smiles. 

“We’re in Richmond,” she notes aloud, and Jack smiles back.

“Fancy running into you here.”

“I believe I’m the one who ran into you, Jack,” Phryne remarks with a smirk and Jack purses his lips, head tilted in false seriousness.

“Well that's the thing about Collingwood girls,” he replies, and she raises an eyebrow at him. “Never seem to stop running.”

She shrugs a shoulder, fingers finding his and lacing them together in a way she finds herself accustomed to doing these days. “True,” she agrees, “but it’s always nice to have a break, you know. Catch my breath.”

“Well if that’s the case.” Jack smiles, using their joined hands to pull her ever closer. “Feel free to run into me any time, Miss Fisher.”

“Not a miss,” she repeats, unable to supress a grin.

Jack leans in to kiss her, soft, sweet, and sinful all at once. When he pulls away again, his answering smile is wide, and his eyes remind her of a boy, standing at the edge of a field in Collingwood with a crumpled bicycle beneath him. They are kind eyes; eyes that belong to a moment of laughter, a lucky charm, a chance to breathe, her Jack.

“Look like one to me.”

   



End file.
